St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1887-01-24
CHURCH AND COLLEGE.
Their Relations and Connections
Defined.

AT Pilgrim Congregational church, Rev. G.
W. Merrill took his theme from Psalms cxliv., IL
and said: The colleges of the West need en-
dowment because, first, of the formative
state of western society. Every people, NOV
ing into new country, is of necessity thrown
into plastic state. The 2I,000 Englishmen
who entered New England before 1910. though
citizens of q nation whose institutions have
stood nearly two thousand years. became
peculiarly sensitive to the new influences to
which they were here subject. Not only on
the earth, teeming with flowers and fruits
which their eyes had never beheld, not only
their uneXplored forest, the new specimens
of beast, bird ana fish, the grandeur AMI love-
illness of the scenery of Il new world; but also
the innovations in government in creed. in
custom, which these altered physical condi-
lions compelled, nodded the race into d new
people. The change in church, and state, and
family, i'll usage and manner, which Puritun
and Pilgrim were obliged to adopt, were hardly
more fundamental than the changes which
the New Highlander, the German, the Swede,
makes in his method of life as he builds his
cabin in the Red river region, or on the
ranch of Colorado, or on the prairie of
Kansas. Therefore, large portion of West
ern society IS in plastic state. 1t can be
formed, and formed with ease. No argument
is needed by this audience to prove that the
college is a chief instrument in the formation
Of society. The college stands in the COM
munity monument to the worth and power
of the human mind. The college determines
the standard of liberal education, and gives
an impulse. strong and constantine the teach
ing and the studies of the academy and the
public school. The college is the conservator
of the beliefs and practices which have been
proved true and useful. The college is the au-
thority under which the discoveries in science,
and the excursions into new domains of
truth are accomplished. The college is the
guardian of civil liberty. We need not to be
reminded that in Russia that spirit OF free
dom, which, though to be condemned in GER
tain manifestation, is yet in its resistance to
tyranny, at heart the spirit of Puritanism,
prevails most strongy among her new stud
ents; and the elders of this audience have
not forgotten that in the late war the entire
sophomore class of Iowa college enlisted, and
that the senior class of Illinois college. on re-
ceiving their degrees, marched in one cody to
the Union army. Standing by the side of the
church. the college is the great molding, civ
iized power in America The college Of
Minnesota, of Colorado, of Missouri may
shape the character of those states, as Yale
and Harvard have for 200 years been the
strongest and best forces in New England's
civilization.
The gifts, Furthermore, to the Western col
lege have been no smaller than were the early
beLeyoences to the institution which now
says to the wealth Of Boston, Give" and it
gives. One man bequeathcd q number of
sheep, another a quantity of cotton cloth
worth nine shillings. a third pewter hagon,
others fruit dish, q sugar spoon, q silver
tipped jug; the farmer struggling for subsis-
tence giving of his focks the housewife of
the domestic treasures which she had care
fully brought across the seas, the mechanic
of his few tools, the clergymen OF his pre-
cious books, each contributing his mite to this
crusade for sound learning and undefiled
riStio